Some questions on both picking and fretting technique

[Gumgo]

@joebegly

I think the answer is “It depends”. Classical guitarists usually pull straight down on their pull offs, with the lower note already fretted. So they would need both fingers planted, then they do the slur. Granted, their speeds are far below the shred stuff most of the people on this forum are going for.

Makes sense. I’m decent at those types of pull-offs (where my finger is already planted). I’ve added “quick pull-offs” to my practice routine (e.g. you only have finger 4 on the string and you quickly plant finger 2 and immediately pull off finger 4) and I’m actually happy with the progress I’ve made on this so far.

That all-hammer legato technique though… that is crazy impressive. The technique makes sense, but the timing precision seems really challenging. Maybe I’ll try to tackle it eventually, if I can get my left hand more sorted out in general.

And on that topic,

@BlackInMind

Try this routine out for a few weeks and see if it helps you the way it did for me:

I’ve been doing this routine daily for two weeks now. I haven’t moved onto the scales yet, I’m just working on fragments 1-6 (and I’ve additionally added patterns for fingers 1-2-3), trying to play them each for two minutes, which I find quite difficult to do consistently. Here is a video of my struggles. I tried to choose the worst clips to demonstrate what I need to improve on.

CTC Legato

My findings so far:

• Great gains the first few days! But that’s to be expected. Now I’ve hit the long training plateau.
• As you can see, my timing absolutely SUCKS, especially for anything with fingers 1-3-4. For 1-2-4 patterns I could imagine that practicing a bunch will help me improve. 1-2-3 is more of a challenge, but it feels at least somewhat promising. But 1-3-4 feels so physically stunted that I legitimately don’t know if practice will even help. I’d love to prove myself wrong.
• I’ve found that the 4 note patterns (e.g. 3-4-3-1) are by far the hardest for me, much worse than ones like 4-1-3-4-3-1. I’m guessing that’s because it’s a less efficient cycle than the others (Efficient Digital Cycles). Or maybe it’s just me.
• I’ve realized that I don’t actually know how to properly practice improving timing because there’s nothing specific that I can focus on to do correctly - the correction is “better physical control” (which I can’t attack directly because… well, I lack the physical control). Perhaps the answer is to practice at a speed where you can just barely keep timing under control. However, in the past I’ve often found that this barrier is VERY difficult/impossible for me to ever actually break through (e.g. I was stuck playing scales at 90bpm for many months).